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Daily Archives: August 9, 2017

It would seem as though only one thing has been consistent with the Somerset Patriots in the second half.

And that, of course, would be their inconsistency.

That was again on display tonight, as they fell to the York Revolution, 5-2, and are again under .500 on the half. None of those things are good.

Yes, they won the first half. Yes, they’re in the playoffs. But no, the second half hasn’t been good. Not by Somerset standards, anyway.

So, how do they collectively find that consistency, at least from an offensive standpoint.

“That’s a great question,” said manager Brett Jodie through a sarcastic, but good-natured-as-always smile. “If I could answer that, then maybe we’d have it, right?”

In the “Brett Jodie” era, the Patriots have never finished with a sub-.500 record in any given half. That could change. Maybe it doesn’t. But, within what he’s got on the roster right now, Jodie is doing everything he can to make sure it doesn’t.

“We’re trying some different lineups, some different people and different combinations,” he said. “The whole name of the game is getting people hot and getting a good amount of them hot at the right time. You get that, and you win and you win a lot. I feel like everybody in here has the potential to get hot, put up consistent AB’s, to be productive, but for whatever reason, it’s not happening consistently at the same time throughout the lineup…in order to maximize your potential, you have to have a bunch of tough outs throughout the lineup. Right now, we’re not as tough as we need to be to win consistently.”

Nope. They aren’t.

But that isn’t a total rip-job, not by me and certainly not by him. Even in the toughest scenarios — ones far more difficult than these — he always stays focused on the positives. And, despite his club’s overall recent woes and those specifically of tonight, he saw plenty of them that gives him reason to be optimistic heading into his club’s upcoming road trip.

“I thought Guzman had some good AB’s today, he hit the ball really hard at the end,” he started. “He got a base hit and had a tough, hard-fought walk. That was a good thing. I thought Marrero got a knock, and then guys are playing no doubles and he hammered that ball there in the ninth…so yeah, it’s not like you look at it and go, ‘Man, this is not solid.’ You do see some things that are going well, but it’s just not as a group right now.”